Ouch! That really about sums up today. I did not hit my net daily goal today & instead hit my daily stop limit of -2.33 R-Units. The first few trades I made this morning were solid but unprofitable. The market was still in trend-up mode while I was trying to catch reversals with divergences. My style just was not melding well with the market conditions, which is fine, I can’t expect to be in sync all of the time.

That being said, the first 3 trades I made, while unprofitable, were good trades. I stuck to my plan on entry & exit but they just didn’t work out. However, after that I think that I went into chase mode and got off of my plan. My first mistake was in failing to compensate for the positive trending nature of the market. In such conditions, I should be buying NYSE-TICK pullbacks to the 0-Line and cut the profit targets on my counter-trend trades significantly.

However, on my 4th trade I failed to do that 2nd one. I made a solid entry on a trade that initially moved in my favor 8-ticks only for me to get hopeful & greedy and let it turn into a full stop. I failed to exit at break-even when the market turned and instead stayed in until my original stop was hit. A needlessly large loss.

My final play was much in the similar vein only it wasn’t nearly as quality of an entry setup as the 4th. However, when it reversed I stayed in and let it turn into a full stop instead of simply cutting my loss much sooner.

Historically, I find strong trending days the most difficult & least profitable kinds of days for me to trade. It seems so bass-ackwards as these should be the days when I could just kick back and ride the trend to glory. What makes today’s loss so much worse is that if I had managed to hit my Net Daily Goal today, I would have finally hit my benchmark for taking my trading to the next level.

The good news is that today’s daily stop replaces a daily stop from 21 days ago meaning that I remain at 15 out of 20 of the last days as far as hitting my daily goal is concerned. Also, if I am able to hit my daily goal tomorrow, then I will still cross the 16/20 threshhold. However, if I fail tomorrow, then I must then hit my goal at least another 7 consecutive days before having this opportunity again.

Consecutive Days Hitting Net Daily Goal: 0
# Days Hitting Goal out of Last 20 (with goal of 16/20) : 15